50 years ago, Illinois became the first state to create a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

On Sept. 17, 1973, Illinois became the first state to make Martin Luther King Day a legal holiday.

Gov. Dan Walker signed two bills into law that day. That’s not unusual. Multiple signings mean more souvenir pens to give sponsors of the bills, more photo ops for the media. In this case, King’s birthday didn’t get top billing in the Tribune report, appearing in a story under the headline: “Forced Busing Ban Okd.”

The story led with the news about a bill that prohibited the state from ordering busing to achieve racial balance in schools, with the King holiday in the second paragraph. The reporter acknowledged the odd pairing, noting King was, “one of the leading advocates of busing.”

Half a century later, racial issues persist in America, inflamed by ongoing culture wars. In Florida, the Department of Education announced revised standards for advanced placement high school history courses that included a requirement that students be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied to their personal benefit.”

Despite Mayor Richard J. Daley having been angered when King brought his civil rights crusade to Chicago in the 1960s, culture wars didn’t provide a card to be played against advocates of a King holiday.

Harold Washington, later to become Chicago’s first Black mayor, was a state representative when he began advocating for a Martin Luther King Day shortly after King’s 1968 assassination. The deadly riots that followed allowed opponents to argue an MLK holiday meant giving in to the threat of future violence. Some threw liberals’ ideology back at them.

“To the liberals of the ACLU stripe, it is a gross infringement on the right of non-Christians to allow the singing of ‘Silent Night’ in the public schools,” wrote syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan, who later ran unsuccessfully for president as a Republican. “Where is the consistency in forcing an entire nation — still bitterly divided about his legacy — to pay tribute to Martin Luther King?”

In 1971, Washington got a bill through both houses of the legislature. Gov. Richard Ogilvie, a Republican, vetoed it, saying he’d support a federal holiday but that one observed only in Illinois would have a “severe impact” on government and commerce.

The election of Democrat Dan Walker in 1972 encouraged Washington to make a second, and successful effort during Walker’s first year in office.

That made Washington a leader of the national campaign for an MLK Day.

Opponents of an MLK holiday said King was an agitator, not a statesman like George Washington, who is celebrated on Presidents Day.

They ignored the fact that Washington, like other Founding Fathers, was a slaveholder, while King agitated for the abolition of segregation, slavery’s vile offspring.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, a moderate liberal, had been leery of an impending visit he was making to Georgia, his home state.

“If he sets foot in the state capital, he will have to declare himself as either for or against the Martin Luther King holiday,” noted Michael Kilian, a Washington-based Tribune columnist. “He cannot afford to insult Black voters already unhappy with his spending priorities. But neither can he afford to miff the rednecks. Without them, he would be nothing.”

In 1983, Harold Washington was elected mayor. Later that year President Ronald Reagan signed into law legislation that made Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday.

There had been strong opposition to the move. U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina led a filibuster against the MLK bill. He carried into the Senate chamber over 300 pages alleging that King had Communist associates.Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan grabbed Helms’ binder of documents and proclaimed it “a packet of filth,” as he threw it on the floor and stomped on it.

Previously, Reagan opposed a federal holiday for MLK, implying King’s reputation for many people was “based on an image not reality.”

But at the signing ceremony, he rose to the occasion.

Noting that the battle for racial justice wasn’t finished, Reagan invoked Martin Luther King’s commandments, as he dubbed them:

“And I just have to believe that all of us — if all of us, young and old, Republicans and Democrats, do all we can to live up to those Commandments, then we will see the day when Dr. King’s dream comes true, and in his words, ‘All of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, . . . land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’ ’’

Yet the story of MLK Day didn’t end there. The struggle over making it a state holiday continued. Politicians hearing different messages from different sections of their constituencies were caught in a bind.

Some states established a holiday that mimicked a multiple-choice exam. In South Carolina, state employees could take a day off on MLK Day, or pick from among three Confederate holidays.

Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia created holiday packages resembling a prizefight that ends with an embrace between boxers who have been trying to knock each other out. Each of those states tacked MLK Day onto a holiday they were already celebrating, Robert E. Lee’s Jan. 19 birthday.

Arizona’s experience witnesses the emotional depth of some objectors’ distaste for Martin Luther King Day and some partisans’ commitment.

In 1986, Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, created a MLK holiday, just as his term was about to expire. But his Republican successor, Gov. Evan Mecham, scratched MLK Day, citing the state attorney general’s opinion that Babbitt’s action was illegal.

Mecham suggested a “Martin Luther King/Civil Rights Day” that wouldn’t be a paid holiday. But the state Senate rejected Mecham’s proposal, and voters were given options for a paid MLK holiday in a 1990 referendum.

The financial stakes of the vote were raised because the National Football League threatened to move the 1993 Super Bowl, which had been scheduled to be played in Arizona, if the MLK holiday ballot proposal wasn’t approved.The referendum fell just short, and though a 1992 referendum passed, it was too late to save Arizona’s Super Bowl. The NFL had already reassigned Super Bowl XXVII to Pasadena, California.

Finally, it was left to New Hampshire to supply the other bookend to a movement Illinois initiated. The state recognized its first MLK Day in 2000.

“It was really strange to me that all the talk was around all these other things, except the real reason was that we really didn’t want to honor a man of color,” JerriAnne Boggis, director of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, told NPR. “Even my kids said, ‘Oh finally.’ We finally did it. It finally happened.’ ”

New Hampshire legislator Deb Pignatelli sponsored the bill to make MLK Day a state holiday.

“I wasn’t happy about us being last,” she said a several years later, “but I was pleased that we were at ease among the states that passed this, that recognized this extraordinary, nonviolent, peaceful individual.”

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com .